Sam wears a black beret when he's practicing his French. He uses any old excuse to dress abnormally - not complete fancy-dress, mind you - usually just one piece of very inappropriate clothing. Like a beret, or galoshes, or a bathrobe.

I had an argument with him about it, once. He was walking around Curzon in a bathrobe, putting books away, and this lady customer quietly let him know that he was walking around in a bathrobe.
"I am?" he said, earnestly. He checked what he was wearing. "Now how did I do that..."
He thanked the lady and, as always happens, she was enamoured with his seemingly helpless absurdity, and stayed for over an hour, asking him ridiculous questions. "My daughter likes books too... Do you have any books for children?"

The others were laughing and shaking his hand for the entertainment when she left, but he came straight over to me, smug as a bug. I wasn't laughing.
"What?" he asked. He does things that make me mad and then he asks, "what?"
It makes me madder. Then he grins and says,
"I like seeing you mad."
"It's not right to flirt with customers so they'll buy more books."
"No harm in a little flirting," he says.
But, oh, there's one thing he doesn't know about me. My take on flirting. If he hadn't swished back into the bookstore to seduce the next customer with his bathrobed ways, he would have found out.

Kristy was beside me, and I don't think she'd been laughing either. I must've asked her why she didn't find it amusing.
"It works so well for him," she said. "A prop, a silly hat, a bathrobe - even those... shades."
She was envious through and through - oh, at this stage, Kristy wasn't the boy-catcher that she later became.

I find it so hard to stay angry at people, I much prefer liking my friends than disliking them. So Sam was already back in my good books, and I wanted Kristy to be a successful seducer too, if she wanted to be.
"You want to be like that?"
She sighed.
"Without the silly hats, yes, I do."
"It's easy," I said, without thinking about what I was saying. "All you have to do is meet a boy, and say, 'I just want to get one thing straight between us before we become friends. I'm not interested in having a relationship - don't develop a crush on me - okay?'"
"You're joking," she said.
And then I realized what I'd just confided, and tried to swallow my words.
"Yes, I was joking."
"Anything's worth a try, Kate, I'm hopeless at approaching boys..."
I held her arm, as if she was going to try it out on someone immediately.
"Don't use it," I said.
"Why not?"

I ended up telling her about some of the boys I'd known when I was at Hawkesbury, the boarding school. I hated that place, and I sure didn't like the people there. Those were bad times. So anyway, Kristy knows about John, about how he started following me around and about how I warned him away. A serious warning, not a mean or teasing one. I'd learnt with boys that a "no, thanks" wouldn't suffice, and I'd thought honesty, straight and plain, would work.
"John, I don't know what you're thinking, but I'd like to forewarn you... I'm definitely not interested in having a boyfriend."
He laughed, of course, and I was humiliated, but felt I'd blocked that door from ever possibly opening. Not likely.

Kristy knows about John, and about my incredible inability to piece together cause and effect scenarios - she also knows about Brian, James, the other James, Christopher, and Keith.

It's simply mad. Take a boy you've only just met - drop them this type of "I'm not interested" drug and BAM, they're hooked. I ask you, why doesn't it work like it ought? The day will probably come when I am interested in a boy, and I show it, and those words too have the opposite effect.

It's mad. And you know the success rate of Kristy using this approach...

This has gone mightily off-track.

Sam, wearing that beret.

This one time, Sam was wearing his beret, and practicing his French. He was supposed to be working, but when you only sell ten books a month, who's going to complain if you get bored and teach yourself a new language? Not Ricks, that's for sure.

It was one of those days when we'd been there since school finished, and the other Curzon Parlor kids had been and gone. Sam's sitting there with a beret perched atop his head, quite crookedly, and I was vaguely attempting algebra while practicing how to be unattractive. That's this thing where I slouch and slump and otherwise look inelegant, to avoid attention in public. I have to practice it though. So as I was rubbing my nose inelegantly while pondering X = Y = 3 bags full, and Sam said, "Tu es very etrange," which even I can understand, and I don't speak a word of French.
"Tu es very etrange," he said, "et je prefere when tu es simplement toi."
"Says you, with your beret," I retorted. I got to practice a scowl.
"Oui," said Sam, in this exaggerated French accent. "I shall geev tu mon beret, et, apres ca, I shall rub mon nose comme un tough kid, et we weel 'ave swapped our act-ing."

Sam had known all along that I was only pretending to be rough. I kind of stared at him.

He leant over the counter, holding out his beret, and then he changed direction and went to kiss me instead. As wonderful as Sam is, I haven't ever dreamed about kissing him, and I think those subconscious judgments are the ones worth listening to. And I'd just recently re-lived the familiar, unsuccessful modes of rejection in that conversation with Kristy.

As a last resort, Ben was born.

"I have a boyfriend..."
Sam froze.
"You DO?"
"From Fenton," I said. "It's an absolute secret, we've been banned from contacting each other, twice."
"A city-boy," Sam said, and fell back onto his seat.
It wasn't a very good day.

Ever since then, I've included Ben in my prayers. As though he's a real person. Crazy... but true.